Review: Baby Doll by Hollie Overton

Hey guys!

I hope you’re all having a great week. It’s finally warming up a bit here and this makes me super happy. The book I want to tell you all about this week is called Baby Doll by Hollie Overton, and I totally freaking loved the heck out of it! I was in a massive winter reading rut for the past month or so, and I think that this little gem pulled me right out of it. Yay! So, before I get started, I want to say a humongous thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for sending me a copy of this book for review. When I read the description of this book on NetGalley, I was pretty stoked, but I quickly realized that it’s pretty difficult to do this story justice in the blurb that NetGalley provides. I loved the main character, Lily and I really adored the dynamic between her and her twin sister, Abby. These two girls complement each other wonderfully. As a weird side note, I have an odd love for stories about twins. The characters always seem to balance each other and complete one another’s personalities in a way that no one else ever could. Before I get all excited, let’s get to the summary!

We first meet our main character, Lily while she is in a state of captivity. She is living in the basement of a cabin, owned by her captor, Rick. In the beginning of the novel, her captor leaves the cabin with the deadbolt unlocked. Lily wonders why he would do this – is it a test? Has he simply forgotten about the lock? Should she try to escape while she has a chance? After thinking about her options, Lily decides to try to escape with her daughter, Sky. Lily and Sky run as fast as possible toward Lily’s family home, where she grew up with her Mother, Father, and twin sister, Abby. Lily hasn’t seen her family in eight years and isn’t sure that they’ll still be living there. Will they have moved on with their lives and forgotten about her? She has grown from a beautiful and athletic teenage girl and returns as an adult. As Lily tries to reunite with her family and reconnect with her twin, we learn about the unwavering bond that they share. Abby seemed to always know deep down that her sister was still alive all of these years and rejoices in the fact that they can be a family again.

Freaking heck, guys, I am really excited about this book! This author has a twin sister of her own and it is super clear in her writing, as well as her acknowledgements at the end of the book that her relationship with her sister was very inspiring. I loved the writing style and the descriptive language was perfect. I wished I could just hug Lily the entire time – I definitely supported her 100%. I loved Abby’s firecracker personally too and I was totally cheering her on as well. I could totally see how close they were and that Abby had clearly never given up hope of finding Lily one day. The timing of this story was also totally stellar, and I admire Overton’s abilities as a storyteller. She did a fantastic job with this book. Setting description in this book was also really great, and I loved being able to perfectly visualize the entire story. -satisfied sigh- This novel was just perfect and it had everything I was looking for. So, besides everything that I loved, was there anything I didn’t like as much? I felt like I was wanting more from some of the characters. I thought Missy’s character in particular had a lot of potential, and I wanted more from her. Other than this little detail, I thought that the book was awesome. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who loves a page-turner or a creepy villain. Rick was definitely icky and a weird part of me loved it. This story was totally awesome and stellar!